A story set in the very early history of my universe's minotaur people. Characters, minotaur language, and origins concepts copyright to me, and unique to my character's world as conceived of by myself. Rough draft, so critiques, criticism, opinions and comments are most welcome.
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Wake to Dreams
"Ja-ola cheslo, claehj nir nahaf." - old minotaur saying.
Translation: Sleep well, dream of glory.
She told me to dream. In whispers, in low, rumbling tones full of soothing and love, she told me to dream of such things as were impossible to imagine then. When my sire was able to be there, he growled in his hoarse, damaged voice of wonders, planted the seeds that had been planted in him, and in his parents. My dam was the one who nurtured those seeds, got them to grow, before her time was done and she joined my sire in the ranks of the warriors. She still lives, I hear, and has no doubt told any other youngling she once birthed to dream. Hopefully, they will not have to just dream. If I survive, maybe one day, I will be able to see her again, press my brow against her own, horns locking, and tell her that it is because of her, this is happening. Maybe I will get to know my siblings.
The crop is ripe. It is in me, and in those around me, my comrades and my kin. I must believe this will work. I must believe we can be free. I can see it burning in the gazes of the ones surrounding me, I can feel it coursing through our veins like the fire and heady expectation I have only tasted on the battlefield. It shines in those eyes, and I can sense it gleaming in mine. It is too grave a business to smile at each other, so we bare our fangs, snarl and snap in played-at irritation, using the harsh, growling words we have made a code of among ourselves to murmur of dreams in the making. It would not do to slip now, not so close, and though we are the bulk of these armies, there are others who will not help us. Overseers and soon-to-be-former allies who would love nothing more than to displace us, the most successful of the mage-made soldiers.
Since the dawn of our kind, and in the decades since that have seen the tireless war and refinement, we, the minotaurs, have slowly worked to this point. Today, we will stop dreaming. Today, we will seize our new name, our new destiny. The Nahatarrm will be born, and the enslaved armies of both mages will die. And so will the gods-cursed mages.
I am not one of them, the spirit talkers, the song singers. Shamans, they have taken to calling themselves, and all honor to them for the name. See, you magic-wielders, we will take the names you deny us. We have outgrown your chains at last. You take us apart and cobble us together, change us in this way, improving this or that aspect for your own amusements or simply to have your precious variety. You thought you had all the answers, covered all the escapes. No magic for us, no, you denied us that at the beginning. Well enough, for we have had a bellyful of it, and hate its taste in our fangs. You missed one stitch in the sewing, though, and it will be your end, you who call yourselves our masters. Pthagh! No minotaur will ever call anyone master again.
They gather, the shamans, they gather and wait, with their candles and their torches and their bowls of water and earth. They will call on the land-heart, they will call on the memories of animals, so long absent from this ravaged place, and impatient for the chance at rebirthing. We may lack the power, may lack the might, for those blessed few may only act as a lens where our enemy is the sun itself… but glass can blind if it reflects just so. And we others, warriors born and until we die, every one of us – male, female, child and elder – we know how to handle the steel in our hands. You taught us, you schooled us, you bred us until there were only the strong, and then you bred us until there was strength and cunning. Did you never realize cunning masked intelligence? Did you never think that we might remember your abuses, and seek to pay them back a hundred fold? Mreh.
This contest of centuries will be over, will have a victor, and whom is the best shall finally be proven. It will not be one of you; two nameless mages, each claiming their art the greater than the other, creating armies to clash like pieces on a gaming board. Stealing ideas from the other side and making them yours… we were your worst move. Now, not just here, not just this tower, but the mirror one across the wasteland of your feud, we gather. We serve you both, and have slaughtered each other for you. Now, we will let your blood for each other, becoming one.
Poison in the wine for the harpies, foul and befouling things, carrion-eaters and spies. The hissing wyvern-spawn with their long, long necks, so perfect for garroting. The demon-tainted will be the hardest to deal with, suspicious things as they are. There are the others too, the horrors that have no kind, just function, all different. But look, see, here, nothing untoward. I go as I do every other day, with these brave kinsfolk beside me, our armor polished and our scars our only badges, cloven hooves marching in unison along the hall that leads to our master’s casting room. Salute me now, you others. The minotaurs beside you will fall on you and kill you soft and fast ere I turn the corner, your deaths sealed with the hunt-signals I give with my tail. Even now, my keen ears can hear the slight scuffle, back there, one scaled worm manages to make before being silenced. It is all I can do not to smile. I hate drakes. So sure they are the master’s finest achievement. Being rare does not make you good, only easy to exterminate. If I have my way, every last one of you arrogant dragon-sons will be dead, all your eggs pashed. Bootlickers.
Ah, but here I am, and I must play my own part. Nodding to the stationary guards to open the ornate double doors, I stand at the center, my warriors flanking me. They must kneel – I am the only one who need not. Never as craven as any drake, though I might knock and announce myself, though I might dip my horns low and bow deeply, my spine is straight, and I carry myself like a warrior. In the usual theatrics the bastard mage requires, I project my rumbling voice so that it echoes about the room. For some reason, the resonance of my deep tone never fails to amuse him. I have had to jump through these hoops since getting the steel ring in my nose changed out for silver, back when I first distinguished myself for command. It was gold now, with my status being so high. Those rings. All my people have to wear them. Demeaning, shameful symbols of our slavery, likening us to the animals our masters say we are no better than. I could not wait to tear mine out, get it cut, whatever it took.
“First among your servants, Master, the one you have been pleased to call Primrose, to give you the daily report on troop movement. At your leisure, my Lord.”
I can see my face in the polished marble floor. Heavy-featured, bull-visaged and broad shouldered, with a blue dun pelt and black mane, long, curving horns bearing their own nicks and battlescars on their grey surfaces, points still sharp. I will tower over the mage I have to give obeisance to when I stand at my full height, some eight and a half feet.
Primrose. His jest, as if I did not know it. Even among my kind, I was brawny and solid, not the slender, breakable things he toyed with when he desired to mate. For one thing only, I will give thanks to these two black-souled bastards. In making my race, the mages showed one bit of common sense, and created females the same as males in height, in build, in strength, and in heart, just as useful as soldiers. Only when it comes time to bear young are we hampered with the humanish breasts, and once our youngling is weaned, they will wane. I have never been so burdened, and now, when our freedom is so close I can scent it trembling on the air, I wonder if I will live out the day. To be able to choose my own mate, stay with only him for all my days… what a good thing that would be. To have a mate… and then tell him if he wants littlings he will be waiting for a damned long time.
Such thoughts are necessary, even for a grim old warrior like me. My dam told me to dream, and so I did. I dreamed for her, and for my sire, and for all those I grew with, and fought with, and watched die. As the snickering mage laughs again for the hundredth time at his own joke, I seethe. The battle-fury is near breaking inside me, and I can smell the aggression rolling off my comrades in heated waves. I will write my real name in his blood, all over this stone floor. He will call me Ahrrsinclaehkal when dead, if not alive. I plan to see that his blood runs so fast and free, I will wish a longer name to ink its syllables with. My kinsman already call me Aehkal, and them, I will give the shortening of it. He, I will not.
“Always so formal, Primrose. You’re a treasure, my green-eyed bull. Stand, and report. I do hope you’ve something good to tell me.”
“Yes, my Lord. I think you shall be pleased. I have several good results from the recent battle. Your forces have scored a coup against one of your opponent’s companies, demonstrating your superior skill and strength in strategic alteration of your servants. The winged of my kind you have dubbed enduks have proven invaluable in ensuring your plans proceed, and have been useful in…”
I spun him a false tale of glowing achievement, standing tall again, and my kinsman the same beside me. The roll of my deep voice filled his ears, and only me and mine heard the pad of leather-wrapped hooves, slowly and in number, accumulating in the outside corridor. The fop of a wizard was crowing over the ‘defeats’ his opponent had suffered, already muttering and making plans beneath his breath, looking over the magical map and making alterations to match my descriptions of troop movements. I watched him, and my warriors were keen to observe him, all of us awaiting the moment to strike.
It came too soon. It came too slowly. But it came in a sudden staggering of the mage, map deforming abruptly as he straightened up, hands snapping into the air and already weaving, unleashing some spells, beginning to form others. The shamans were attacking him. He was not without considerable defenses. We all knew that. We all knew what would be happening, today. He was, for one, perfect, precious moment, distracted. We had a chance, which is all I ever dreamed of having.
Roars. Mine. My warriors’. More of us poured through the open door at my back. It became a blur, and magic singed my fur, burned through the air, burned us. Two enemies besieged the mage now: one those distant shamans, concentrating and fighting to get through his magic, one a seething mass of fur and horns and teeth and rage, boiling into the room and triggering defenses. Elementals of ice and fire, stone and earth. Fireballs flew fast and thick, and all around me it was battle, weapons clashing in a confined space, the thick sounds of bodies falling, blood spilling. Imps materialized from runes on the floor, bat-winged and red-eyed, and swarmed over me as I used my dagger – the only weapon any of us who had walked into the room were allowed to carry. The chorus of melee chimed all around me in victorious roars and battle-cries cut short into gurgling. I snarled away the pain and ripped a large-mouthed, sharp-toothed imp from my neck, feeling the blood run down my chest as my clawed fingers crunched through the demonling’s skull. There were others, biting and slashing, and so many I could not move, could not go forward, like my warriors were around me, surging in a sea of snarls towards the embodiment of all our hatred. They were being cut down, with jags of light that left nothing but ash, with fiery missiles hissed from fingertips at close range. Scores fell to the elementals who were trying to close protectively around their master.
My dam told me to dream. To dream in the sleep that was shackled by the facts of our existence. To sleep, and gather the strength I would need for the new day. To dream of glory. Of freedom. I have dreamed, my sire. I have dreamed, and this battle is part of it. Surely so, for it feels like one, time spanning longer and longer over the minutes, the seconds. Sounds are muted, distilled to shadows of the clamor I know infects this room. My actions are sluggish, but it matters little. I can feel the warmth of others at my side, at my back. They are all my warriors, and I have told them to dream. We dream, as one, and oh, I wish you could be here, my dam. For it is glorious.
I am there, suddenly, close enough to see his eyes. Such horror in those shallow, stagnate pools, their blue long ago muddied by cracks and crazed in white and grey lines. His neck is in my hand, and I can feel the pulse of his heart against the skin of my clawed fingers, feel the bob of the bone in his throat against my furred palm as he tries to speak. His body is jerking – already, my kinsmen have begun to tear at his robes, trying to stab through to flesh. I hurt, distantly. I am wounded, I know. I have been wounded many times before. I snarl, in the precious seconds left. There is no time for my full moniker, and I have suddenly decided that he should not have the privilege of knowing it anyhow.
“My name is Aehkal!”
And then I rip. It is a frenzy for those of us clustered around the mage. Muzzles and hands are just as red as daggers. Fabric and skin tear, muscle and tendon are shredded apart. The screaming does not last long, but oh, so sweet a thing.
I stagger away from where what is left of our creator and enslaver is being smeared across the marble floor. Magics are being killed, and many of us will never leave this room alive. Corpses abound. I taste blood, and I do not know if it is mine, or the mage’s. I make it to the window past all the crowds, pushing others out of the way. Mane loose, I lean out over the tower’s balcony.
“The horn! Sound the horn!”
The cheers that break out are near deafening, but even as I roar my command again, it comes. Over the ruin the mages have made of this country, over the battlefield so soaked in blood the soil must surely be stained red forever, comes the deep, bellowing sound of the signal horn. The horn so long in place, fixed, supposed to be blown when one mage or the other had at last won their contest. Each possessing one, and at the top of each tower.
The horns, with which each army of minotaurs would signal their opposing number of victory. Ours. The other mage was dead.
I tipped my head back and laughed, as our own horn was blasted. The distant tones harmonized, and blaring together, the bugles and jubilation of my people – my free people – made the most beautiful song I had ever heard.
“Blow harder you wonderful bastards! Wake them up! Wake them all up!”